This didn’t turn into something more substantial, so I’m just leaving it here as is. I like the idea of visualizing attitude (or other) differences by race/ethnicity, sex, and generation (or other characteristics) with distances. Plus my daughter is learning about x-y coordinates in math.

I got these just using the General Social Survey online analysis tool (here). These are the question texts.

HELPBLK (1-5):

Some people think that African-Americans have been discriminated against for so long that the government has a special obligation to help improve their living standards; they are at point 1. Others believe that the government should not be giving special treatment to African-Americans; they are at point 5. a. Where would you place yourself on this scale, or haven’t you made up your mind on this?

FEFAM: Strongly agree to strongly disagree (1-4):

It is much better for everyone involved if the man is the achiever outside the home and the woman takes care of the home and family.

I used two categories each of race (Black/White), Sex (man/woman), and Generation (18-44/45+). Scores are shown as differences between each group’s mean score and the population average.

Short story: Whites show little difference by age, gender, or generation on the race question, but big differences by gender and age on the gender question. Blacks are similar to Whites on the gender question except that younger Blacks men are less opposed to breadwinner-homemaker family arrangements than are younger Whites (especially men).

I also added some other groupings for comparison:

No real point to make about this except that I like the idea of representing these patterns like this. Someone should make a GSS tool that does this for you on any question. With confidence intervals. (If there are already are such tools, please advise.)